Soldato
It was easier to type lol
How does fibre work?
- Thread starter 86JR
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I've worked for service providers since 2000, I've recently been working on 4G backhaul, and I'd bet a significant amount of money that people will be replacing their DSL and Cable modems with 4G/5G wireless, before you see the likes of physical fibre optic cabling being run into people's houses, once it becomes more mature and with better coverage.
Fibre to the actual household is simply too expensive and requires so much labour I don't think it'll ever happen, in any quantity or element of affordability, it's bad enough trying to get Virgin to lay a run of coax cable into a business, let alone fibre into somebodies house.
I've got Hyperoptic 1Gig - the only reason it works for them is they buy a cheap layer-2 circuit from BT (probably QinQ or psuedowire) which they run into some sort of small Ethernet access network - it's cheap, simple and doesn't run on 50 year old infrastructure underpinned by someone else.
Fibre to the actual household is simply too expensive and requires so much labour I don't think it'll ever happen, in any quantity or element of affordability, it's bad enough trying to get Virgin to lay a run of coax cable into a business, let alone fibre into somebodies house.
I've got Hyperoptic 1Gig - the only reason it works for them is they buy a cheap layer-2 circuit from BT (probably QinQ or psuedowire) which they run into some sort of small Ethernet access network - it's cheap, simple and doesn't run on 50 year old infrastructure underpinned by someone else.
Soldato
Is it just me who is thinking why do you "need" 1GB U/D?
My Virgin 120Mb line hardly ever reaches it's max unless I'm downloading from Steam.
My Virgin 120Mb line hardly ever reaches it's max unless I'm downloading from Steam.
I think to an extent you're right, you probably hit diminishing returns over 100Mbit - at the moment. Personally I'll take the 20Mbit up that I get with Infinity over a ~30Mbit improvement in download speed, but that's how I use it.
Once you have multiple 4K streams, limited local storage in favour of cloud everything etc. then you'll see the benefits of a gigabit connection.
Once you have multiple 4K streams, limited local storage in favour of cloud everything etc. then you'll see the benefits of a gigabit connection.
But is 4/5g wireless secure? I run a business from home, I don't want someone able to infiltrate it by sitting outside in a van with a copy of airsniff running, which is impossible by wire?
Where I live 2G signal is dodgy and 3G just doesn't work let alone 5G.
My iPhone 4s won't connect to the internet unless it has a wifi link it is that bad, the little round thing just twirls and it times out. It only works in the middle of Plymouth and Truro, anywhere else, nada.
Well why not? We are a first world country with a 10th world internet system thanks to the monopoly that is BT.
Some people I know live in £3million houses and all BT can offer them is ISDN single link. They won't even take a quote for FTTP.
Soldato
Why not?
It's nothing to do with whether we are a first world country, what a problem for us to have!!! We only have 80Mb when the Americans have 1Gb. I think if anything we need perspective.
90% of the time you aren't going to be using anywhere near your maximum bandwidth. ISP's have the products available, you just need to be willing to pay for them.
Well that's the story right now.
I'm talking about a short way into the future, telcos are pushing for faster wireless and better coverage, they're not really pushing to deliver fibre optic cabling into people's houses.
If you can get 100-200Mbps via 4G and it's around 50ms in latency, there's no need for a phone line.
The encryption on 4G is stronger than regular wifi and hasn't been cracked afaik, but it's no worse than wifi.
FTTP is future proof. We've been playing catch-up from the word go.
Soldato
"Future proof" is the biggest misnomer there is regarding technology
The attitude "what a problem for us to have" is what gets us in pickles, we should be pushing and pushing to be a premier country technology wise, not sitting back going "well we don't really need it so why have it". This is what lets governments govern for their own agenda instead of the peoples agendas. I guess this is how we ended up going from an empire to a dumping ground for the people that no one else wants too.
Soldato
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- 20 Oct 2008
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We have a system that, for the most part, relies on a commercial return on investment.
I’d guess, given your rant above, that the renationalisation of the telecoms sector isn’t something you’d be looking for?
Daily Mail reader by any chance?
I’d guess, given your rant above, that the renationalisation of the telecoms sector isn’t something you’d be looking for?
Daily Mail reader by any chance?
I don't even understand what you're arguing about any more. Is it that the government should be pouring money into building out a broadband network to places that aren't commercially viable to invest in, because they are and it's called BDUK. And rightly or wrongly it's giving that money to BT because nobody else was interested.
Contrary to popular belief we don't have a third-rate network in this country when taken as a whole instead of looking at edge cases. People living in the middle of nowhere suffer from a lack of infrastructure in the same way they suffer from the lack of everything else, and this is the same story around the world. Google dropping fibre into a couple of cities isn't indicative of the US as a whole - it's not a nation of farmers with a gigabit fibre connections paying $60 a month for it.
Contrary to popular belief we don't have a third-rate network in this country when taken as a whole instead of looking at edge cases. People living in the middle of nowhere suffer from a lack of infrastructure in the same way they suffer from the lack of everything else, and this is the same story around the world. Google dropping fibre into a couple of cities isn't indicative of the US as a whole - it's not a nation of farmers with a gigabit fibre connections paying $60 a month for it.
Soldato
I don't want to go on a rant about this but I'll state two facts:
1) There were lots of companies interested in broadband / NGN connectivity.
2) The procurement policy that the government put in place has actively obstructed competition from getting into the market. Essentially it was written to prevent anyone who wasn't BT with onerous capital requirements and other 'hard' barriers preventing competitors from getting into the market. Cronyism at it's worst.
This hasn't prevented grants for community-lead projects from being given out thankfully, just the bulk of funding goes to BT to speed up the rollout which was going to happen anyway in most part.
Yep, the UK's broadband isn't that bad at all, certainly top 30 in the world. The problem is the way the metrics are measured. My company look after many clients who operate in 'FTTC enabled' postcodes / areas but can't get it because the green cabinets haven't been connected for various reasons. In some areas the threshold for being 'enabled' is as low as 40% of green boxes in the postcode. This is OFCOM being lapdogs for the industry and being complicit in their number-fudging.
On the bright side, FTTC has now passed 10 million premises. There's still no genuine plan for rolling out nationwide fibre though.
tl;dr OFCOM is not fit for purpose and is complicit in BT abusing it's monopoly position.
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Still waiting for FTTP runs in my area locally. Once they are done though I'll gladly be putting 1Gbit Down / 100Mbit Up in.
As far as the fibre is concerned (IE The fibre optic runs themselves) they will support whatever speed is enabled by the equipment either end. FTTC is different though.
As far as the fibre is concerned (IE The fibre optic runs themselves) they will support whatever speed is enabled by the equipment either end. FTTC is different though.
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As far as I was aware none of the other companies bidding for funds could sufficiently explain how they would ensure competitors could deliver services using their infrastructure to the same extent that Openreach could (because they've been doing it for ages). The areas that are being gap-funded by this cash might have received it eventually, but only when the costs dropped low enough that it would make money back or someone offered to privately fund the upgrade. It could have been written in a way that meant nobody but Openreach would ever meet the requirements though, I'll give you that.
I don't agree that there's a monopoly in the strict sense of the word, anyone can dig a trench and build their own FTTP network if they want to, but people quickly realise that it is monumentally expensive to do so.
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Soldato
The UK is not a bad place as far as Internet connectivity goes. Stop complaining.
Associate
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- 2 Jul 2005
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- 522
Well here is my take on it.
I'm in a FTTP area and I can order a 300Mbps infinity package but I opted for the 38Mbps infinity package over FTTP (the same package usually ordered for FTTC).
Despite multiple BT engineer visits and a few days blowing fibre around blockages and into the house we only pay £25ish/month for it with free connection. That is good value for money for what a business would pay for a 40Mbps leased line to an internet provider. I know they're not the same technology but for home use you've got to get real.
Here is the thing, I went for fibre because the ADSL line was about 2Mbps which is a bit stretched nowadays since even the google homepage is cluttered with complex CSS and javascript. The fact the guardian homepage still takes a good few seconds to load on a 38Mbps downstream connection is due to poor webpage design - i.e. thumbnails being higher resolution than their placeholders.
I wouldn't be jealous of 1Gbps connections at home, as it only justifies poor web development without actually gaining anything. Not to mention you're going to need a fairly powerful router to benefit truly from that connection speed.
Jonathan
I'm in a FTTP area and I can order a 300Mbps infinity package but I opted for the 38Mbps infinity package over FTTP (the same package usually ordered for FTTC).
Despite multiple BT engineer visits and a few days blowing fibre around blockages and into the house we only pay £25ish/month for it with free connection. That is good value for money for what a business would pay for a 40Mbps leased line to an internet provider. I know they're not the same technology but for home use you've got to get real.
Here is the thing, I went for fibre because the ADSL line was about 2Mbps which is a bit stretched nowadays since even the google homepage is cluttered with complex CSS and javascript. The fact the guardian homepage still takes a good few seconds to load on a 38Mbps downstream connection is due to poor webpage design - i.e. thumbnails being higher resolution than their placeholders.
I wouldn't be jealous of 1Gbps connections at home, as it only justifies poor web development without actually gaining anything. Not to mention you're going to need a fairly powerful router to benefit truly from that connection speed.
Jonathan